Pleasantly Surprised
by Xehra
Summary: Janeway is evil


Title: Pleasantly Surprised  
  
Author: Xehra xehra1@hotmail.com   
  
Rating: PG  
  
Setting: Voyager, Season 7  
  
Summary: Janeway is evil - way AU  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own the Voyager crew, I just wanted to play with them for a bit  
  
Feedback: Please! Always appreciated  
  
Archive: FF.net  
  
Warnings: Character death  
  
Thanks: To Bridget for the beta - and for making me see the funny side...  
  
~~~  
  
Captain Kathryn Janeway smoothed her hair in the mirror and steeled herself to look her reflection in the eye. It didn't show. No guilt, no regret. She didn't know whether to be relieved or worried.  
  
It was time. But still she did not leave her cabin. Instead walked to a viewport and stood looking out at the stars, arms folded across her chest. Musing.  
  
It really had been absurdly easy. She had actually been pleasantly surprised with how well it had gone. Not that she'd planned it. No, not at all. It had all been so spur-of-the-moment. She had been very lucky, really.  
  
Now though, the feeling of triumph she had been expecting was tainted. Damned Chakotay. He wasn't supposed to have gotten so upset. Even now, his expression haunted her - a frozen moment when utter disbelief contorted his usually calm features. And then the anger. And then the crying... Dammit. Why did he have to grieve so much?  
  
It had all been so routine, a diplomatic visit to a system's capital planet, an exchange of cordialities and gifts. Kathryn had always hated those getting-to-know-you functions, having to paste on an interested expression for interminable hours. All they had wanted was permission to pass through this part of space.  
  
Fate, as usual, intervened - because these things never, in her experience anyway, went smoothly. Tuvok inadvertantly insulted someone by commenting that some custom or other was illogical. He really should have known better, of course, but the words were out there, hanging in the air, before anyone registered their full import. The aliens had already taken great offense in the wake of her own hand-shake faux-pas - how was she to have known they abhorred skin-to-skin contact? Somebody should have briefed her better.  
  
It all went downhill from there - the pompous, puffed up affronted attitudes of their hosts quickly slid into outright anger when Seven had calmly observed there was no need to get upset as their cultural differences naturally...  
  
And then there were guards, and attempted arrests... and somebody lost their head and fired a weapon - not one of her crew, as they had all been unarmed, but maybe they'd wrestled a gun from a guard...  
  
Before she could even shout an order, there had been a firefight, right there in the main reception room. Whoever was in charge on the bridge had transported in a detail of their own security personnel.  
  
She had found herself crouched behind an overturned table next to Seven. The Borg silently handed her a phaser. Kathryn didn't bother to ask where she'd got it. The bitch had always been so annoyingly competent in situations like these.  
  
And then a great surge of anger welled up within Kathryn Janeway, captain of the Starship Voyager. It was a crimson tide of pent-up hate she had not known was there, now released - it was impossible to resist its pull. All the petty jealousy she'd ever harboured against Seven, all the times she'd never admitted to herself how much she regretted liberating her from the Collective - all of it came together in one moment of red-hazed clarity. One image manifested itself in her head - the way Chakotay had looked at Seven on the bridge that morning.  
  
No! screamed her very soul. He must not look at her like that. He MUST NOT.  
  
*You always looked at ME like that...*  
  
So she acted. Rashly, yes, but at the dictates of her conscience. Wasn't she supposed to let that always be her guide? So she'd leveled the phaser at Seven's head and shot her. Right in the middle of her pale, irritatingly smooth forehead. The whole thing had taken mere seconds.  
  
Afterwards, it was so easy, stupidly easy, to act shocked, devastated. There had been such wild crossfire, she said, she couldn't stop Seven trying to return fire at their attackers.   
  
But then Chakotay had been there, that expression on his face and Kathryn's heart had torn in two. Silently, he cradled Seven's lifeless body in his arms and, his voice breaking, ordered them all beamed up. So stoic. Kathryn felt like hitting him.  
  
Her door chime sounded, releasing her from the pain of that last betrayal.  
  
"I'm on my way," she called out, wondering at how she'd managed to put just the right amount of upset and flustered in her tone.  
  
Turning from the viewport, she went again to the mirror to automatically smooth her hair. Green eyes looked back at her, free of regret. Again, she didn't know whether to be relieved or worried.  
  
As she strode down the corridor, words formed in her head. She was always good at finding the right ones. It was seeing Chakotay's face as she gave Seven's eulogy that upset her the most.  
  
END 


End file.
